Goodbye semaphores?

Goodbye semaphores?

Posted Jan 5, 2006 9:52 UTC (Thu) by eludias (subscriber, #4058)
In reply to: Goodbye semaphores? by thedevil
Parent article: Goodbye semaphores?

http://people.redhat.com/mingo/generic-mutex-subsystem/pa... contains:

+++ linux/Documentation/mutex-design.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,135 @@
+Generic Mutex Subsystem
+
+started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
+
+ "Why on earth do we need a new mutex subsystem, and what's wrong
+ with semaphores?"

...and boils down to: smaller data (16 instead of 20 bytes/mutex), smaller code, faster (because of unknown bug in semaphore implementation), stricter semantics since a mutex in 'owned' by the locker while a semaphore shares ownership between all lockers.

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